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Sate your appetite while you learn about cinema in this seminar hosted by Professors Mike Giuliano and Marie Westhaver. Join us in an exploration of food in Giuliano and Marie Westhaver. Join us in an exploration of food in film as both professors bring their area of expertise to the table. Attendees are encouraged to bring their favorite food to share for a potluck as part of the experience. Additionally, the Columbia Arts Center will provide snacks and beverages.

Marie Westhaver is a professor of the arts and humanities at Howard Community College. Michael Giuliano is an associate professor of film and interdisciplinary arts at Howard Community College.

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The following was written by Little Patuxent Review Co-Publisher, Desirée Magney.

How fortunate for Little Patuxent Review (LPR) and local writers that the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) Conference is taking place in Washington, DC this year! AWP is celebrating its 50th anniversary and the conference – running from Wednesday, February 8 through Saturday, February 11 – will be held at the Washington Convention Center and Washington Marriott Marquis Hotel!

Come visit LPR at table 613-T in the Exhibit Hall at the Convention Center.

Take at look at our newly released “Prisons” issue featuring the art work of Lania D’Agostino, interviews with poet and novelist Chris Abani and activist Betty May, as well as poetry, fiction and nonfiction from numerous writers. Peruse some of our back issues with themes ranging from “Social Justice” to “Food” to “Myth” and our unthemed issues as well. This is our 11th year of publishing a high quality literary journal. While based in Columbia, MD, we welcome writers nationwide to become part of our LPR family.

This will be my first AWP Conference. I will be joined by our editor, Steven Leyva, Deputy Editor, Ann Bracken, and some of our interns. We are looking forward to reconnecting with LPR friends and meeting new ones. We would love to talk with you about our journal and the submission process, so stop by our table for a chat.

If you’d like to know more about the conference or haven’t yet registered to attend, here is the link.

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The following was written by Little Patuxent Review Co-Publisher, Desirée Magney.

I was sitting at my breakfast room table a few months ago, talking on the speakerphone with our editor, Steven Leyva about LPR’s upcoming “Prison” themed issue. As the new co-publisher, I was furiously taking notes about the publication schedule. Our conversation then switched from the minute details of producing the issue to the prison theme itself. We spoke of the body as a prison and the artist, Lania D’Agostino, whose work represents those confronting issues of gender identity. But another type of bodily imprisonment immediately came to my mind and the pencil I was using to take notes froze in my hand as an image of my eldest sister Kathy flashed before me.

About two years ago, my sister, Debby, and I signed a sheet at the front desk of our sister, Kathy’s new assisted living apartment and began the walk towards her room. The odor hit me first – a faint hint of urine covered with a thick blanket of Lysol’s Crisp Linen scent. But it was as nice as these places can be and I had seen a number of them over the past few years. The carpet was forcefully bright and cheery – forest green to hide the stains but with red, pink, and white flowers to soften the look. I glanced up and on the wall to my left was a framed print, an exact replica of the one at my mother’s assisted living apartment building in Washington, D.C., where I had been her caregiver.

I hadn’t expected to be in a place like this again so soon. Our mother had passed away from Parkinson’s disease and Vascular Dementia in mid-March 2014. All my sisters and I joined together for the funeral in Pennsylvania, where we grew up. During those few days back in Camp Hill, it struck me once again how different we all were. Kathy with her dark hair, once olive-skinned, now pale but meticulous about her vitamins, herbal supplements, healthy eating, conspiracy theories, and Mormon religion. Linda, with her light brown hair and eyes to match, pinned like a sorority girl with a four-inch Catholic cross fastened to her long, loose, nun-like dresses. Debby, blond like me but blue eyed against my green ones, both of us lapsed Catholics and of no religious denomination but accepting of our sisters’ rights to believe in whatever religion or politics they chose, so long as we didn’t have to discuss them.

It was mid-October of that same year, when Debby and I met up outside Atlanta to visit Kathy. Around the time of Mom’ s funeral, Kathy had been diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome and was wearing a soft splint on her right forearm. The weakness wasn’t improving and when a friend commented to her how painful it must be for her to work all day on a computer, she responded she had no pain.

“Then you can’t have carpal tunnel syndrome,” her friend replied. “It’s very painful.”

Kathy sought a second medical opinion. By then she had started to experience weakness in her left hand and arm as well. After tests to eliminate a brain tumor and something called Stiff Man’s Syndrome the doctor told her the news.

“You have ALS.”

ALS, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, is more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. If you Google it, you will find it is often described as “the cruelest disease.” Over time, you lose your capacity to do everything, including swallowing and breathing, while your mind remains fully engaged and aware. Following a diagnosis, the life expectancy of an ALS patient is typically three-to-five years. In Kathy’s case the disease was progressing at a speed the specialists at the ALS Center at Emory Hospital in Atlanta had never seen. The only positive thing I could think of was that she had access to the best ALS doctors in the world. They could walk her through the progression and make practical recommendations along the way. But there is no cure.

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On this day 40 years ago, The Writer’s Center first opened its doors, and has been inspiring and supporting an extraordinary community of writers ever since. Help us celebrate our 40 years with a day of holiday book shopping, readings, and even a champagne toast!

Members of The Writer’s Center are invited to bring a poem or up to five pages of prose to be read by an editor and be given quick feedback and advice on where to submit. Members will spend ten minutes with the editor.

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As New Year’s arrives, there are still quite a few events to celebrate the end of the year. From an art gallery to open mic nights and book readings, take the family to different sites across the area. Below is a listing of arts-related events in Maryland and DC.

The Wilde Reading Series is a monthly reading series exploring craft sponsored by the Columbia Arts program. This month’s event features Nancy Naomi Carlson and Sue Ellen Thompson. A poet, translator, and editor, Nancy Naomi Carlson’s poetry has been published in The Georgia Review,Poetry, and APR. Sue Ellen Thompson has authored five books of poetry and is a winner of the Pushcart Prize and the Pablo Neruda award. The event is free and open to the public.

The Artist’s Gallery has reopened at a new location. The new exhibit, “New Beginnings,” features work by members of the Artist’s Gallery , many of whom are award-winning artists. Various visual art forms are represented, from glassworks, painting, photography, woodcuts and mixed media. The new gallery space begins a new chapter for the Artist’s Gallery as well as for old and new patrons.

Politics and Prose final events for the year include an author reading by Nancy Isenberg and two Acoustic Open Mic performances. Nancy Isenberg’s book, White Trash, covers the history of class in America, historicizing the treatment of class since America’s founding. Acoustic Open Mic sessions are a landmark at The Den, starting musicians perform guaranteeing a new show each session. Free to attend, find your next favorite band with Politics and Prose.

The Ivy Bookshop is hosting a reading by senior sports writer S.L. Price for his new book Playing Through the Whistle. Price, in his book, tells the story of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, a small town that produced prominent NFL players and suffered a sharp decline after the shutdown of its successful steel mill. Sports exceptionalism is contrasted against economic strife, painting a picture of a contrasting American through the history of one town.